Those who could not walk were bundled like baggage upon the backs of their grassers. Most of the animals now bore nothing but wounded; the supplies and equipment looted from the Balawai rode crude but sturdy travois that the grassers dragged behind them.
On this march, too, the ULF would endure a new tactic from the militia: they had begun night raids. They didn’t appear to have any hope of actually catching us—that wasn’t the point. Instead, the gunships flew high overhead and fired laser cannons down at random. Just harassment. To spoil our rest. Keeping us awake and jumpy.
Wounded men and women need sleep to heal; none of them would get it. Every dawn, a few more would lie still and cold on their bedrolls when the rest of us arose. Every day a few more would stumble, blind with exhaustion, and stagger away from the line of march to lose themselves among the trees.
Usually permanently.
There are many large predators on Haruun Kal: half a dozen distinct species of vine cats, two smaller variants of akk dogs as well as the giant savage akk wolves, and many opportunistic scavengers such as the jacuna, a flightless avian creature that travels in bands of up to several dozen monkey-lizard-sized birds—which are equally adept at climbing, springing from branch to branch, or running on flat ground, and are not at all picky about whether what they eat is actually dead. And most of the large predators of Haruun Kal are intelligent enough to remember the good feeding to be had in the wake of a column of wounded Korunnai. Which is why stragglers rarely caught up with us again.
We were, as Nick would say, a walking all-you-can-eat buffet line.
This is also why the ULF didn’t have to post much of a guard on the prisoners.
There were twenty-eight, all told: two dozen jungle prospectors and the four surviving children. The jups were left to stagger along supporting each other as best they could, dragging those who could not walk on smaller versions of the travois hauled by the grassers.
They were watched by only a pair of Vastor’s Akk Guards and six of their fierce akk dogs; as Vastor led Mace past, he explained that the guards and dogs were there only to make sure the Balawai did not steal weapons or supplies from wounded Korunnai, or otherwise attack their captors. The guards didn’t need blasters; any prisoner who wished to escape into the jungle was welcome to.
That is, after all, what was going to happen to them anyway: stripped of everything but their clothing and boots, they would be turned loose in the jungle, left to make their way to whatever safety they might be able to find.
Tan pel’trokal. Jungle justice.
Mace leaned alongside the grasser’s neck, to speak softly for Vastor’s ears alone. “How do you know they won’t double back along the line of march? Some of your wounded are barely walking. These Balawai might think it worth the risk to steal weapons or supplies.”
Vastor gave a grin like a mouthful of needles. Can you not feel them? They are in the jungle, not of the jungle. They cannot surprise us.
“Then why are they still here?”
It’s light, Vastor rumbled, with a wave of the wrist at the green-lit leaves above. The day belongs to the gunships. We give prisoners tan pel’trokal after sunset.
“In the dark,” Mace murmured.
Yes. The night belongs to us.
Mace remembered the recording of Depa’s whisper: …I use the night, and the night uses me… It gave his chest a heavy ache. His breath came hard and slow.
Nick was down with the prisoners, leading by the reins a mangy, underfed grasser. This grasser had another dual-saddle setup like the one that had been blown to bits on Nick’s grasser back in the notch pass; each saddle was big enough to hold two children. Urno and Nykl rode in the upper, forward-facing saddle, gripping the heavy pelt of the grasser’s ruff, peering out from below its ears. Keela and Pell rode in the lower saddle, facing the rear and clinging to each other in mute despair.
Seeing those four children reminded the Jedi Master of the child who was not there, and he had to look away from Kar Vastor. In his head he saw the lor pelek holding the corpse of a boy. He saw the gleam of the shield through the wet streaked sheen of Terrel’s blood.
He could not meet Vastor’s eyes without hating him.
“And the children, too?” The words seemed to swell up Mace’s throat and push themselves out at the other man. “You give them to the jungle?”
It is our way. Vastor’s growl softened with understanding. You are thinking of the boy. The one in the bunker.
Mace still could not meet his eyes. “He was captured. Disarmed.”
He was a murderer, not a soldier. He attacked the helpless.
“So did you.”
Yes. And if I am taken by the enemy, I will get worse than I gave. Do you think the Balawai will offer me a clean, quick death?
“We’re not talking about them,” Mace said. “We’re talking about you.”
Vastor only shrugged.
Nick caught sight of them and gave a sardonic wave. “I’m not really a baby-sitter,” he called. “I just play one on the HoloNet.”
His tone was cheerful, but on his face the Jedi Master could read the clear knowledge of what would happen to these children at sunset. Mace’s own face hurt; he touched his forehead and discovered there a scowl. “What’s he doing here?”
Vastor stared past Nick, as though to look upon him would be a compliment the young Korun did not deserve. He cannot be trusted with real work.
“Because he left me behind to save his friends? Chalk and Besh are veteran fighters. Aren’t they worth the effort?”
They are expendable. As is he.
“Not to me,” Mace told him. “No one is.”
The lor pelek seemed to consider this for a long time as he walked on, leading Mace’s grasser. I do not know why Depa wanted you here, he said at length. But I do not have to know. She desires your presence; that is enough. Because you are important to her, you are important to our war. Much more important than a bad soldier like Nick Rostu.
“He’s hardly a bad soldier—”
He is weak. Cowardly. Afraid of sacrifice.
“Risking his mission—his life—for his friends might make Nick a bad soldier,” Mace said, “but it makes him a good man.” And because he somehow could not resist, he added: “Better than you.”
Vastor looked up at the Jedi Master with jungle-filled eyes. Better at what?
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WINDU
I don’t see Vastor as evil. Not as a truly bad man. Yes, he radiates darkness—but so do all the Korunnai. And the Balawai. His is the darkness of the jungle, not the darkness of the Sith. He does not live for power, to cause pain and dominate all he surveys. He simply lives. Fiercely. Naturally. Stripped of the restraints of civilization.
He is less a man than he is an avatar of the jungle itself. Dark power flows into him and out again but it does not seem to touch him. He has a savage purity that I might envy, were I not a Jedi and sworn to the light.
Black is the presence of every color.
He doesn’t make the darkness, he only uses it. His inner darkness is a reflection of the darkness of his world; and it darkens the world around him in turn. Internal and external darkness create each other, just as do internal and external light: that is the underlying unity of the Force.
As Depa might say, he didn’t start this war. He’s just trying to win it.
And that was it, right there: my Jedi instincts had made a connection below the threshold of my consciousness. Vastor. The jungle. The akk dogs, and the humans who had been made into Vastor’s pack. Depa. Darkness so deep it was like being blind. Nick’s words: The jungle doesn’t promise. It exists. Not because the jungle kills you. Because it is what it is.
The war itself.
Only later, when I would spend a full day riding alongside Depa’s howdah on the dorsal shell of her immense ankkox, when I would have to lean close to the gauzy curtains to catch her half-whispered words, would I understand where my instincts were leading me.
There are times when her voice is strong and clear, and her arguments lucid, and if I close my eyes and ignore the rocking of the ankkox’s gait, the insect stings and rich floral rot of the jungle, I can imagine us chatting over a couple of cups of rek tea in my meditation chamber at the Jedi Temple.
In those times, she makes a terrifying sense.
“You still think like a judicial,” she told me once. “That’s your fundamental error. You still think in terms of enforcing the law. Upholding the rules. You were a great peace officer, Mace, but you’re a terrible general. That’s what cost so many lives at Geonosis: we went in like judicials. Trying to rescue hostages without loss of life. Trying to keep the peace. The Geonosians already knew we were at war—so only a few of us survived…”
“And if I thought like a general, what should I have done?” I asked her. “Let Obi-Wan and Anakin die?”
“A general,” murmured the shadow through the curtains, “would have dropped a baradium bomb on that arena.”
“Depa, you can’t be serious,” I began, but she had stopped listening to me.
“Win the war,” she went on. “Win at the cost of two Jedi, one Senator, and a few thousand of the enemy.”
“At the cost of everything that makes Jedi what we are.”
“Instead, a hundred and more Jedi died, and you have a galaxy at war. Millions will die, and millions more will end up like that boy Kar killed: twisted, angry, and evil. Gather a million corpses, and tell them your ethics outweighed their lives…”
To this I have no easy answer, even now.
But as Yoda says: There are questions for which we can never have answers. We can only be answers.
That is what I must try to be, for I know, now, what it means to be a keeper of the peace in the Galaxy of War.
That is: it means nothing at all.
There is no peace. What we thought was the Great Peace of the Republic was only a dream from which our galaxy has now awakened. I doubt we’ll ever fall back into any dream like that again.
In the Galaxy of War, no one sleeps that well.
This understanding came later; at the time, as I sat in the grasser’s saddle and looked down at Kar Vastor, the prisoners behind us and Depa’s ankkox still unseen ahead, I had only a notion—a hunch—a mass of unprocessed feelings and unsorted ideas.
An instinct.
But somehow my instincts seemed to be working again… which is why I chose to send Vastor on without me. As I asked Depa a thousand times, when she was my Padawan—
Is the true lesson what the teacher teaches, or what the student learns?
A few paces beyond where the Balawai prisoners stumbled along the jungle floor, Mace Windu reached past the grasser’s nose and took its reins in one hand. “This is far enough. Leave me here.”
Vastor stopped, looking back over his massive shoulder. Depa awaits.
“She’s waited for weeks. She’ll wait a few hours more.” For the first time since the battle at the notch pass, Mace felt calm. Sure. On solid ground. “Go on without me. I will attend her when I choose.”
You are sent for. She is not to be defied. Vastor turned and tugged on the reins, but Mace had them in his fist, and they might as well have been bolted to a cliff.
Vastor’s eyes flickered with distant danger: lightning from a storm below the horizon. You will regret this.
“I am a Jedi Master, and a Senior Member of the Jedi Council,” Mace said patiently. “I am a general of the Grand Army of the Republic. I am not to be sent for. If she wants to see me, she will find me at the steamcrawler track before dusk.”
The lightning in the lor pelek’s eyes came closer. I have said I will deliver you.
Mace matched his stare exactly. “Funny: that’s almost what Nick said. He didn’t have much luck with it either.”
My orders—
“Are your problem.” Mace let the reins fall and spread his open hands. He went perfectly still, perfectly relaxed, perfectly calm, except for the sizzle of the Force that arced like static electricity from the two lightsaber handgrips to his empty palms. “Unless you choose to make them our problem. You can do that right now, if you like.”
Vastor let the reins drop as well. He stepped away from the grasser and turned to face the Jedi Master squarely. His immense shoulders bulged, and muscles across his chest went rigid in acid-etched definition. The air shimmered like a mirage around him: anger beat against Mace like a hot wind in the Force. You will come with me.
“No.”
Dark power clutched at Mace’s will. You will come with me.
Slowly, reluctantly, Mace slid himself out of the saddle and slipped to the ground. He took two steps toward Vastor.
And stopped.
“I no longer enjoy your company,” the Jedi Master said. “Go now. Do not return to me without Depa.”
Vastor’s eyes widened. His mouth worked soundlessly.
“You and I should not be alone together. There may be a fight.”
Tendons stood out in Vastor’s neck, winching his head downward and pulling his lips away from his sharp-filed teeth. I do not wish to fight you, dôshalo. Despite the rage smoking off him in the Force, his voice was soft. Depa will be angry to find you dead.
“Then you’d best be on your way,” Mace replied reasonably. “Don’t want to make Depa angry, do you?”
Apparently he didn’t: Vastor’s growl thinned to a snarl of frustration. And what should I tell her you are doing here?
“Nothing that I can be bothered to explain to you.” Mace turned back to his grasser and took its reins once more. “Any questions Depa might have, she should ask me herself.”
Though pretending to busy himself with adjusting the grasser’s tack, Mace paid absolute attention to Vastor’s white-hot stare burning its way into his shoulder blades. He stayed loose and balanced, ready to spring in any direction should the lor pelek lunge for his back.
Instead, he only heard a snarl and a growl and several short, deep yips: Vastor had said something to one of the Akk Guards who watched the prisoners. With one last glare that Mace could feel as though a lens focused sunlight on his skin, Vastor whirled away and plunged into the jungle, loping up the line of march.
Mace watched him go, bleak satisfaction on his face. He thought: So much for being the welcome guest.
The Akk Guard whom Vastor had spoken to gave Mace a dire look, echoed by the three akk dogs nearby. Mace ignored them all, and a few seconds later the Akk Guard stomped off to find his partner and the other akks. Mace caught Nick Rostu’s eye and beckoned. Nick turned the children’s grasser over to one of the Balawai and trotted over to the Jedi Master, keeping one eye turned toward the departing Akk Guard. “Shee. Those guys give me the creeps. Looked a little tense there, Master Windu. What did the big guy say to you?”
“Here, hold him.” Mace handed the grasser’s reins to Nick. “How much did you hear?”
“Some of what you said. Got some guts, you do.” Nick stretched up to scratch the grasser on the side of its neck. “But Vastor—maybe you’ve noticed? You can only understand him when he’s talking directly to you. When he’s talking to somebody else, he always sounds like he’s growling or whistling or making some other kind of animal noises and stuff.”
“Yes, I had noticed something like that,” Mace said slowly, nodding. “But I’d thought it was just me. Back at the outpost… things were confusing.”
“That’s why it’s kind of like you’re talking to yourself, you get it? In my head, he talks like a Pelek Baw curb-monkey. So what did he say to you?”
“He was,” Mace said dryly, “trying to impress me with his sense of duty.”
“So: what now? You didn’t dust off the most dangerous man in the Korunnal Highland just to come and have a chat with the president of Rostu Jungle Nannies Inc. You have a move to make.”
Mace nodded. “We have a move to make. Mount up. You’re going to lead these prisoners to the steamcrawler track so that the militia can f
ind them and pick them up.”
Nick’s mouth dropped open. “We… me? Why would I want to do something like that?”
“Because I gave them the word of a Jedi Master that if they surrendered I would keep them from harm. I will not be made a liar.”
“What’s your word got to do with me?”
“Nothing at all,” Mace said. “I’m sure you enjoy thinking about Keela being disemboweled by a vine cat. When you think of Pell, do you see her starving to death in a gripvine nest or having her eyes pecked out by jacunas?”
Nick looked sick. “Hey, easy with that tusker poop, huh?”
“You think the boys will be gored by tuskers, or shredded by brassvines? Maybe they’ll get lucky and fall into a death hollow. At least that is relatively swift, as their lungs are eaten by caustic fumes, and their own tears scald their faces like acid…”
The young Korun turned away. “You have any idea what Kar and Depa will do to me?”
“You’ve been over the ground in this region. If I lead them myself, I’ll end up losing us all in the jungle. Mount up. Right now.”
Nick snorted. “Shee, still pretty free with the orders, aren’t we? What if I just don’t wanna? What if I do like thinking about all that stuff? What if I want those people dead? What then?”
Mace went still. He stared off into the jungle, his eyes filled with its darkness. “Then I will beat you into unconsciousness,” he said quietly, “and ask someone else.”
He looked at Nick.
Nick swallowed.
Mace said, “I won’t tell you again.”
Nick mounted up.
“Kar Vastor,” the Jedi Master said, looking again into the jungle, this time up the line of march where the lor pelek had vanished, “is not the most dangerous man on the Korunnal Highland.”
Nick shook his head. “You only say that because you don’t really know him.”
“I say that,” Mace Windu replied, “because he doesn’t know me.”
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